Posts Tagged ‘Ramot’

The city of Jerusalem has approved two more Light Rail lines in the holy city, a Green Line and a Blue Line. The go-ahead was given at a municipal planning meeting last month.

The current Red Line is also to be extended, north to the Neve Yaakov neighborhood, and south to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center.

“I am happy to see that Jerusalem will go from having one successful Light Rail line to a network of three lines,” Transportation Minister Israel Katz said after the approvals were passed. “Light rail has significantly changed the city’s transportation… Jerusalem deserves a light rail system like that in Europe.”

The approximately 19.6 kilometer route set for the Green Line begins in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and will pass through the Jerusalem Convention Center, known in Hebrew as Binyanei Ha’Uma, where the “A-1” fast line railway has a terminus. It will cross the current Red Line on Herzog Boulevard, and run up to Mount Scopus.

The Green line is currently set to include 36 stops to service an expected ridership of 200,000 passengers per day, according to the Railway Gazette website.

The Blue Line is set to run about 23 kilometers from the northwestern Ramot neighborhood through the center of the city out to the eastern Talpiot neighborhood, and then on to Gilo.

The Blue line will include branches to the Malcha Mall and to Mount Scopus as well, with 42 stops and an expected ridership of some 250,000 passengers per day.

(JNi.media) The Jerusalem Building and Planning Committee on Wednesday approved construction of a second Light Rail line that will run from Gilo in the south to Ramot in the northwest and serve 250,000 residents.

Approval of the new “Blue Line” comes four years after the current “Red Line” was launched, running from Pisgat Ze’ev in northern Jerusalem, through the center of the capital to Mount Herzl.

Wednesday’s decision carries a huge political significance because like the Red Line, the new section will run through neighborhoods claimed by the Palestinian Authority. Connecting the entire city with a Light Rail physically unites the capital and establishes a de facto veto of any idea of dividing it wherever the trains are running.

The Blue Line’s is 12.5 miles long, including a half-mile long tunnel. It will run on Hebron Road, the main artery connecting Gilo and Talpiot. A branch of the Blue Line will serve the Emek Refa’im area and Malkha, which features a high-tech center, an upscale mall, the Teddy sports stadium and a new culture center.

Long-range plans for the Jerusalem Light Rail include a third, “Green Line,” connecting Gilo with Mount Scopus. In addition, work is underway to extend the current Red Line to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center.

Jerusalem residents are hoping that construction of the Blue Line will be less of a horror show than the building the Red Line, which was plagued with long delays and caused massive inconvenience to shop keepers and pedestrians.

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said after the Jerusalem committee’s decision, “We are witnessing a transportation revolution in Jerusalem. The Red Line has proven that a light rail system operating alongside buses is the most efficient way for the capital’s transportation.”

Katz noted that the widening of Highway 1 west of Jerusalem and the construction of a high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem rail will also help the city’s growing transportation needs.

Shmuel Hanavi (Samuel the Prophet) passed away on the 28th of Iyar, which is today. He was buried just north of Jerusalem in Ramah (Shmuel A-25:1), in an area which is today called, Har Shmuel or “Nebi Samuel”, located just north of Ramot. The building can be seen from Highway 443.

Or at least it is commonly believed that this is his burial place.

The prophet was 52 years old when he passed away, just 4 months before Shaul Hamelech (King Saul) died.

The fire department and Hatzalah emergency crews have secured the Nebi Samuel complex and surrounding forest, and ask people to be careful to not start any fires, and not to park on the paths, which will block traffic.

Joke of the Day:

An Israeli tour guide was taking a group for a tour of Israel and he pointed out a structure on a hill, and told the tourists that this was the grave of Shmuel Hanavi.

The next day, the tour guide took them to a different area, and pointed at another structure on a hill and told the group that this was the grave of Shmuel Hanavi.

One of the tourists asked him, “How can that be? Yesterday you said it was a different building.”

The tour guide answered, “Yesterday I showed you Shmuel Aleph, this is Shmuel Bet.”

Jerusalem police found two stolen guns, 11 bullet cartridges and dozens of stolen IDF stun grenade in eastern Jerusalem Friday and arrested an Arab suspect in Jabal Mukaber, an Arab neighborhood next to the Jewish area of Armon HaNatziv.

The Israeli government has ordered a crackdown in Arab areas of the city in the wake of the new intifada, riots or Arab Spring uprising, depending on the mood of an editor.

The warning signs have been flashing for three years, but an Israeli blind eye and President Barack Obama’s overt backing for Palestinian Authority-claimed areas of Jerusalem have allowed terror to capture the fancy of an increasing number of Arabs in what is commonly referred to as “eastern Jerusalem.”

In fact, the Palestinian Authority also claims sovereignty over southern Jerusalem, home to tens of thousands of Jews in Gilo, Talpiot and Har Homa, and northern Jerusalem, where Pisgat Ze’ev and Nevei Yaakov are the homes of tens of thousands of other Jews. French Hill and much of Ramot also are in areas where President Obama has declared Jews to be “illegitimate” and “illegal.”

American ignorance of the Arab culture, especially when it comes to its attitude of a Jewish state of Israel, does not take into account that the president’s remarks, certainly not intended as incitement for violence, give the Arab world justification to ram cars into people, beat them with iron rods and throw rocks at them, at their cars and at the Jerusalem light rail trains system in order to defeat the “Zionists.”

Ambushes of Jews in “eastern “Jerusalem were reported as far back as three years ago. People were severely beaten and hospitalized, but the government ignored the incidents, encouraging the state of anarchy.

Police tried to stay out of Arab neighborhoods in order not to “escalate tensions,” a ghetto state of mind that is paralleled today by calls for Jews to stay away from the Temple Mount in order not to anger Arab Muslims.

It more or less reminds me of a little talk gave to a group of armchair Zionists in Baltimore more than 20 years ago during the Oslo idiocy. After I described the illegal hobbies of our Arab neighbors in the southern Hebron Hills, and after explaining the Jewish meaning of the word “Shalom,” one of the names of God, a very polite and stupid gentleman stood up and asked, “Well, if the Arabs don’t want leave you alone in peace, why don’t you just move to Tel Aviv?”

The Arab world has fed Arabs in Israel, and more worryingly an entire new generation, a steady diet of hatred and the notion that they are a “people” who are “stateless.” They believe Israeli is “occupying” them and would not believe how loathsome and pathetic were the lives of the grandparents and great-grandparents under the Jordanian occupation from 1948-1967.

That is part of history they never will learn. Instead, Hamas has done what Yasser Arafat did – exploit a vacuum and incite people to war.

There is war in Jerusalem, a war that Israel cannot afford to lose.

The violence may subdue tomorrow, or next week or next month, or not at all. Like most wars, there is no logic. Jerusalem Arabs received benefits from Israel that they could only dream of receiving under a Palestinian Authority regime.

They enjoy the light rail system, a cheap and efficient way of arriving to work.

But much of Arab Jerusalem is lawless. The city had allowed tens of thousands of Arab buildings to be constructed without permits. It also has discriminated against Arabs when it comes to funding for schools, parks and other municipal services.

The Obama administration officials’ vulgar treatment of Israel’s prime minister is troubling. But the policies behind their vulgarity – and reckless – are far worse.

Two officials were involved: one who used the epithet to describe Israel’s leader, and a second who agreed with the obscene remark. The point they were both making is that they consider Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “coward” because he won’t make the concessions that they believe might lead to peace.

What concessions, exactly? President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and other senior administration officials have said time and again that they want Israel to retreat to the 1967 armistice lines and permit the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. That would, of course, reduce Israel to just nine miles wide at its vulnerable mid-section, near Netanya. It would also almost certainly lead to a hostile Arab state — whether nationalist or Islamist — in Israel’s heartland.

What about Jerusalem? The White House and the State Department are very careful to refrain from saying explicitly that they want to redivide Jerusalem. They don’t say that out loud because they know it would infuriate millions of pro-Israel Christian and Jewish voters (not to mention almost all Israelis).

But “redivide Jerusalem” is exactly what the Obama administration is implying every time it condemns Israel for building apartments in so-called “East Jerusalem” and claims that such construction endangers peace. But the only peace it would endanger is one in which that part of Jerusalem is expected to be given to the Palestinians.

Otherwise, why would the White House be so upset if apartments are built in Ramat Shlomo, an Orthodox neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, or Gilo, a section of southern Jerusalem? The problem with Ramat Shlomo and Gilo is they are situated slightly beyond the old 1967 line.

Israelis naturally find the Obama administration’s characterization of such areas as “illegal settlements” laughable. Gilo is not a collection of trailers on some wind-swept hill. It is a modern, urban locale with more than 30,000 residents. Anyone who has driven in Jerusalem knows that Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, and the other neighborhoods denounced by the U.S. administration are physically indistinguishable from the rest of the city.

But the White House and State Department refuse to accept this reality. They are locked into a rigid ideological formula, according to which the 1967 line is sacrosanct and anything beyond it is “illegal” and “occupied.” And anything that is illegal and occupied, is expected to be surrendered.

There is, of course, nothing sacred about the 1967 armistice line. It was never an official border. It was simply the furthest point to which Jordanian troops managed to advance in the 1948 war. The Jordanian aggression in 1948 was illegal. The Jordanian occupation of the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City, from 1948 to 1967 was illegal. The Jordanian destruction of 57 synagogues in the Old City during the 1950s and 1960s was illegal. Jordan’s use of tombstones from the Mount of Olives cemetery as latrines in Jordanian Army barracks was illegal (not to mention repulsive).

When Israel won the 1967 war and reunited Jerusalem, it was correcting an outrageous historical injustice. Decent people everywhere should celebrate that the city has, since 1967, been ruled by a democratic government that respects the rights of all religions and safeguards the holy sites of all faiths.

And, indeed, the United States Congress has recognized it since 1992, when the House of Representatives and the Senate unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113, celebrating “the reunification of Jerusalem.” That resolution asserted that Jerusalem “must remain an undivided city.”

Perhaps the Obama administration should be more frank about its true aim of re-dividing Jerusalem. Perhaps it should honestly acknowledge that it regards all construction beyond the 1967 line as illegal because it wants to Israel to give those areas to the Palestinians. xxx Perhaps they should say it plainly, and then see how it plays out among Israel’s voters, and America’s.